


The World Was Wide Enough

by returntosaturn



Series: Compass [1]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-17
Updated: 2016-12-17
Packaged: 2018-09-09 03:59:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8874931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/returntosaturn/pseuds/returntosaturn
Summary: He cleared his throat, setting the pot over the stove. “I…heard,” he said shortly.She nodded. Of course he had. Of course it had been blasted from every wireless frequency, printed in special edition evening copies of the Prophet: WWII ENDED. GRINDELWALD BOUND IN OWN FORTRESS. A MOST ‘SPECTACULAR BATTLE’ WAGED BY DUMBLEDORE, AUROR SAYS.Even as it had all ended, she could not see, as many seemed to, that the world would be put right again by the stroke of the clock. As if by simply ending the conflicts, and sending home the many that knew not the reasons for them, everyone would wake up tomorrow in a just world. It was not so. // Tina returns home from the most pivotal battle of WWII, and thinks of the dichotomy of family and war.





	

Since they’d discovered that their first child would be a son, she had somehow subconsciously assumed that her days would fill with peeking through the kitchen window and seeing them on their knees in the yard picking through the mud for flobberworms or dangling by their knees in the wiggentree hunting friends for their pedigree of Bowtruckles already found.

And indeed, she had. She’d forced them both to bathe in the trough outside after they’d tracked through the sitting room with matching lopsided smiles, ruddy hair, and muddied boots. 

She’d tended jars with holes poked in their lids, monitoring the growth of bulbous billywig cocoons with the two of them, and seen the delight on her son’s face when he’d released the plump little creatures into the night sky.

By age five he was feeding animals alongside his father, and by age six the Second World War was in full swing, shadowed by the ever-heightening tensions between their kind and the terror rolling through Europe, now at every turn.

She was called away often, but not for very long. Sometimes she would wake to an emergency alert, alarm clock screeching in its telltale tone. She would be back before Newt had managed to lace up his boots for morning mealtime.

Sometimes it was a few days.

This time it was a week and a half. A week and half of exhaustion and loneliness and urgency.

Now, boots on the marshy ground of the South England countryside, quiet and stillness stretching for miles around, she wondered if it had been entirely a dream.

A glimpse into hell that she’d been mercifully spat back out of, appearing with a pinch and snap on the edge of the bit of land that had become more like home than New York City could ever hope to be.

Their stone cottage with big, welcoming windows, sat at the mouth of a wide, long path that had been cleared of reeds and tall grass. Even from here she could hear the calls and mewling of various beasts. She could see the flicker of graphorn tails, hear the sweet singing of fwoopers somewhere near, and as she made her way up the path towards the little house, their familiar voices were muffled by the wall of cat tails and reeds.

“I see you!” “Oh you got me! Now you hide…”

Laughter mingled together, flattened by the dense meadow. She paused, waiting there, listening to the narration of whatever game they’d made up now.

“Where are you, little gnome?” Newt’s voice wondered, coming closer.

A bright giggle sounded from the cat tails near Tina’s left.

“I hear you. You’ll have to do better at hiding than that—“ He emerged, grass poking from his bangs and shirt half-untucked. His smile waned and he blinked at her, as if she were a ghost, or better yet some magnificent creature he’d only just discovered.

She smiled tearily, and shrugged, that warm sense of fullness—of home—finally blossoming in her chest at the sight of him.

He grinned again, eyes wide, studying each feature as if he’d somehow forgotten.

“Mummy!”

Arms were gripping her legs, a face nuzzling her trousers.

“Hello, my love!” She forgot her suitcases, letting them fall on the graveled path and crouched down to cuddle their son close, giving a firm squeeze and kiss on the cheek that he promptly wiped away. She looked back to her husband, gazing down on them in that familiar way that she’d never been able to completely decipher. 

“I caught myself a little garden gnome,” she said, tickling Laurie’s belly. He erupted into a fit of giggles, twisting in her arms.

“I see,” Newt said, stepping closer, deliberately.

Laurence pulled free, distracted by the croon of the augureys near the pond. He hurried away, a blaze of curly hair and sharp elbows.

“Hi.” She stood up, dusting off the knees of her trousers, smiling up to him.

“Hello.” He leaned to give her a chaste peck, but she pulled him in tighter, looping her arms around his neck to hold him for just a moment.

She plucked the bits of grass from his hair tenderly. He gave a dry chuckle, an embarrassed blush. A thrill shivered up her spine.

“Did…How are things?” he said, peering uncertainly.

She gave a nod. “Let’s not talk about that now.” 

He nodded knowingly, eyes warm in the sun dipping down to the tips of the umbrage.

“Tea?”

“Coffee,” she corrected and he chuckled at their ongoing debate that never grew old.

A chorus of howls and a flurry of tails and claws greeted her at the door to their warm little cottage.

"Hello, Mauler, you ugly thing. Hoppy, still fat. Is Daddy giving you too many treats again? Oh, Milly, my sweet girl. Yes, hello."

She scratched at all their ears, and stepped over them circling at her ankles.

Newt tapped his wand to the kettle for tea, and set about gathering supplies for her coffee. She leaned back against the apron sink, twisting her fingers together.

The house was no less messy but no more cleaner than when she’d left it. Neither of them were great at housekeeping spells. That had always been Queenie’s department, and once they were married, Tina found that Newt didn’t really mind so much. They were both too focused elsewhere to care. But she supposed she could be thankful that the place hadn’t burned down in her absence, or been turned into a barn.

He cleared his throat, setting the pot over the stove. “I…heard,” he said shortly.

She nodded. Of course he had. Of course it had been blasted from every wireless frequency, printed in special edition evening copies of the Prophet: WWII ENDED. GRINDELWALD BOUND IN OWN FORTRESS. A MOST ‘SPECTACULAR BATTLE’ WAGED BY DUMBLEDORE, AUROR SAYS.

Even as it had all ended, she could not see, as many seemed to, that the world would be put right again by the stroke of the clock. As if by simply ending the conflicts, and sending home the many that knew not the reasons for them, everyone would wake up tomorrow in a just world. It was not so. Their world—the whole world—would never be without threat. She had always known that. Just as she had always known that it was her job to protect the innocent from it. They would continue with their lives until the next scare, and hopefully then she would not feel so old as to shy from it.

Her palms warmed when Newt pressed a mug of steaming black liquid between them. She inhaled deeply.

She nodded to him. “I could’ve stayed but…there’s nothing to do but clean up bodies and cry for them.” And she was never one for crying. Her voice sounded cold. She just wanted to be here…for now. She blinked away the sting in her nose. It was probably selfish to feel like this, but in all the bleakness their world, and the non-magical world, had shuffled through the past few years, she could not think it fair to stay away from them any longer if it wasn’t necessary.

“How have things been?” she asked, hoping a different topic would clear her head.

“Fine, just fine. He missed you. He was a fair hand at helping me with the creatures.”

“As expected.” She smiled blearily. She was glad their son had taken to the creatures with so much spirit. Not that she expected anything less. But their hope for Laurence was that he would not come to know the world as a frightening and dark place very early on. That he would still be able to see it as a promising place. She hoped he would as long as possible.

“Dumbledore was there,” she mumbled into her mug.

“Yes, I heard.” His voice was brighter, more confident. As it always was when he grew excited about a topic. “How fantastic for you to meet again. Even under such circumstances.”

She nodded. She’d been introduced to the great wizard once before, at Hogwarts when Newt had been invited to speak as a guest, years ago when she’d first jumped the pond.

The man on the battlefield had been an eerie contrast to the man she’d met at the school. This man was sharp and furiously focused, and in the midst of the combat, she now understood why she’d felt strangely around him before. Like there was something hiding, another part of him that he concealed. Tina had been wary of it then, but now she understood…

It was very possible that no one else had seen it, but Tina had caught the measure of regret and duty creased into the old man’s brow as he fought the most stellar battle any of them had ever seen.

She bowed her head towards her mug, sipping.

They stood in silence, uncertain of where to pick up. Today was a grey day, a day of in betweens at the end of which they could sleep easy, but knew not where to begin in living their lives as they had been. It had been so long without restlessness, now it had become unshakable.

Desperate for something uplifting, she suggested an early dinner. Best to slip back into normalcy, she figured.

She set the spells in motion to set the table for dinner, conducting with practiced artistry. He called from the back door for Laurie to come inside.

They took their little supper together, scored by stories from Laurence about his adventures with Daddy while she'd been gone.

"The occamy eggs hatched and Daddy let me hold one! And then, one night, the mooncalfs got inside the shed and ate up all their treats, and came into the house looking for more...!"

"Inside the house, really?" Tina asked, eyeing her husband who'd gone rather red.

"Yes. But it's ok because we magicked everything back to normal."

Tina breathed a laugh through her nose, and Newt seemed only slightly relieved.

She nudged his foot with her own under the table, sending him a wink.

After the dishes were cleared and washing, she sat with Laurenence in his bed, reading The Fountain of Fair Fortune aloud, until his head started to droop onto her shoulder.

She kissed his forehead, and smoothed his fringe, which made him grimace even in his sleep.

The no-maj...muggle...and magical children alike had been evacuated from London when someone had decided quite obviously that it was longer safe for them there.

Tina couldn't imagine it. She'd been apart from them for only a week, and it had been the most empty and desperate week of her life.

She could not imagine giving this up. For all the nerves and hesitation they had about having a child at all, the time before seemed somehow empty and listless. It made her heart thrum with hope, drawing her to defend this little life they’d built for themselves all the more.

She watched him a moment or two longer before turning to leave.

Newt was at the door, watching carefully.

She met him there and kissed his cheek, moving to slide the door quietly shut. 

"Are you alright?" he whispered in the darkness of the hallway.

She must've looked very sullen, thinking on what it would've been like had they sent their son--the one true and beautiful thing that existed in their world--away, or if she'd lost Newt. If they had lost her to the beaches of Normandy in the week just passed.

"I'm fine," she breathed. She drew a breath, taking in the dark blue color of his eyes in the dimmed hallway. Sometimes she forgot how honest she could be with him. How well he understood her even with so few words exchanged. She did not have to hide with him. “I just missed you both so much,” she continued.

His fingers slipped beneath her chin, drawing her close to kiss her.

This was real. This was what she had fought for. What they had all fought for in their different respects. These simple moments defined her above all battles and oceans traveled. The world would never remember she'd been there when the Dark Wizard Grindelwald was imprisoned in his own fortress. They would never remember her part on the Normandy beaches, dehydrated and aching, pushed to her limits of pushing back the hoard of zealots that met them at the cliffs.

But her son would remember, somewhere in the far away corners of his mind, a mother that would read him stories, a father that would let him feed the graphorn foals and catch flitterbys with him in the sticky summer air.

She melted against Newt's shoulder, resting her chin there, staring at the crude drawings of nifflers and thunderbirds and fwoopers that plastered their son’s bedroom door. 

Images of a comrade's stony, lifeless face, passed through her mind. The smell of gunpowder and shrapnel scattering not far off. Sea salt. The thunk of bodies against rocks...

She shivered, willing it all away, narrowing her focus to this little bit of home, this short time here before she'd be called to duty again.

And she would go. A thousand times over to keep this.

"I'm tired," she breathed against the thin material of his shirt.

She longed for the morning. A slow, easy ritual of bickering over coffee or tea then deciding on both. Laurence slipping bits of his porridge to the kneazles. Strolling around their wide yard doting on and feeding their animals. These were the tent pegs of her life, even as the world never seemed the same one day to the next.

"Lets sleep," he suggested, drawing away and taking her hand to lead her to their bedroom.

Her pajamas were laid out already, no doubt while she had been reading. She slipped gratefully into them, remembering again the feel of the well-worn silk.

She crawled in bed first, and drew him close when he joined her. 

"I can't believe you let mooncalves into our house...."

“It was an accident..." he whispered into her hair with a smile.

“Likely story,” she yawned.

“Would you like to investigate?”

“I’ll let you off, this time.”

“Very grateful, I’m sure.”

Their banter dissolved into sleepy whispers and eventually she’d drifted off into a solid sleep that she had not had in the entire time away. Things would not be stable for a long time now, and would never truly be quiet. There would always be some measure of threat. Living above it would be her goal; the world was wide enough for both.

**Author's Note:**

> ( tumblr: @allscissorsallpaper )


End file.
